go team.

in december of the year 2010, a big chair fell on my big toe. it was the toe on my right foot, my favourite foot. it was very sore and i screamed and might even have sworn. the next day was a basketball tournament, one that i was excited for, considering i had hardly played in the last few years (it was also a oliebollen tournooi, which means that it can in no way be taken seriously).

i woke up the next morning and found that my toe wasn’t sore at all, in fact, it was hard to find any evidence that i indeed had been in so much pain the night before. a dark dark patch of blood did slowly accumulate under my nail, causing most people that saw to say things like “that’s definitely coming off” and “you’re going to lose that one”.

the dark patch remained dark and hardly moved. first for days, then for weeks. after three months, it might have moved up a centimeter, a third of the way across the great plain of my toenail, not a lot at all.

come last week, it was half a year to the incident. my nail had never fallen off, nor did it seem to grow, though i cut it regularily, so i thought. it was during one of these regular cutting sessions that the nail did finally appear a little loose. upon tugging on it quite hard there was just a hint of motion, and i decided to operate. barbaric and primitive to be sure, an interesting experience nevertheless. armed with a knife and tiny nailclippers, i tackled the nail.

turns out, i had 5 toenails, four of which were loose and not connected to each other, stacked one on the other, all lying on a bottom nail that was growing rather slowly under this heavy burden.

5 toenails one one toe.
it was a strange day.

one; i lost the before picture in the mail
two; one of my favourite current pastimes is looking at anything through my indian-made magnifying glass